The Economist: "Unjust and Ineffective"

[MissMillie]

ONE day in 1996 the lights went off in a classroom in Georgia so that the students could watch a video. Wendy Whitaker, a 17-year-old pupil at the time, was sitting near the back. The boy next to her suggested that, since it was dark, she could perform oral sex on him without anyone noticing. She obliged. And that single teenage fumble wrecked her life.

Her classmate was three weeks shy of his 16th birthday. That made Ms Whitaker a criminal. She was arrested and charged with sodomy, which in Georgia can refer to oral sex. She met her court-appointed lawyer five minutes before the hearing. He told her to plead guilty. She did not really understand what was going on, so she did as she was told.

She was sentenced to five years on probation. Not being the most organised of people, she failed to meet all the conditions, such as checking in regularly with her probation officer. For a series of technical violations, she was incarcerated for more than a year, in the county jail, the state women’s prison and a boot camp. “I was in there with people who killed people. It’s crazy,” she says.

She finished her probation in 2002. But her ordeal continues. Georgia puts sex offenders on a public registry. Ms Whitaker’s name, photograph and address are easily accessible online, along with the information that she was convicted of “sodomy”. The website does not explain what she actually did. But since it describes itself as a list of people who have “been convicted of a criminal offence against a victim who is a minor or any dangerous sexual offence”, it makes it sound as if she did something terrible to a helpless child. She sees people whispering, and parents pulling their children indoors when she walks by.

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more at the link: http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14164614

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A thoughtful article

[Eric J in MN]

1. Mitt Romney likes to scare people by citing the number of registered sex offenders...

...on MySpace.

But some of them were never dangerous (that article notes that someone can be put on the registered sex offender list for public urination.)

Some of them who were dangerous aren't anymore.

[nightrain]

2. sad. And probably the law needs to have some provisions for

cases like this. What a lesson about being responsible sexually!

[Eric J in MN]

3. Each state should have a board the registered sex offenders can petition...

...to ask for their names to be removed, on the grounds that they aren't dangerous.

People on the list for having sex with a teenager as a teenager, and for public urination, should generally be approved for removal from the list.

[Eric J in MN]

4. kick

kick